This month I would like to touch on filing. Filing seems to be coming up a lot lately with my clients and in general conversations, so I thought I would offer some standard rules. Filing Rules: 1. Keep it SIMPLE! I understand that color coding is popular, but remember to keep it simple. Too much color can be too busy on the eye. My suggestion is to pick a plain color for the hanging folders (the standard recyclable green) and the same color for the folder inserts (manila). Plain folders make it easy for you to add a new folder category or subcategory into your system. Now, if necessary, incorporate color with tabs. Tabs are easy to snap in and out of any folder in case of a mistake…much easier than changing out color folders. You can buy standard tabs or sticky labels in color, but you can also buy something called viewable tabs in color. Viewable tabs are designed so you can see the words from the top, front, and back. They are a little bit expensive, but a wonderful solution for those of you who are “visual” thinkers. Only use color tabs/labels to define the grouped folders that make up a particular category. 2. Be CONSISTENT! If you label your folder ‘water’, be sure you also label the phone company folder as ‘phone’, and not ‘Cingular’. Otherwise, when you go to look for a folder it will take you longer to find it because you won’t remember if you filed it under the general term of ‘phone’ or the actual phone company name of ‘Cingular’. I would suggest labeling with general terms such as water, phone, electric, etc., so that if you change companies, you won’t have to change the tab out. That would only add on more work, and go against your ‘keep it simple’ rule. 3. RETENTION Policy! If you have trouble knowing when to get rid of documents, I would suggest you file your short term and long term documents separately. Anything related to taxes should be kept for 7 years, so that’s considered long term filing/storage. Your utility bills, on the other hand, can be rotated out yearly. As well as yearly policy renewals. I would suggest keeping medical records, and important documents such as birth certificates in a long term area. Now that all of your short term storage is together, at the end of a year, you can go through and clean it out. You won’t have to worry and wonder if you threw away something important because those important documents are kept in a separate drawer/area nice and safe. Sorry that the above is so long winded, unfortunately filing is not the simplest process. It can be confusing and difficult to some, so I like to explain in detail. On another note: I would like to invite you to my home on July 28th from 10am-4pm. I will be offering a workshop. I will systematically take you through each room of my home and give you organizing advice and tips on what you can do to make your life a little bit easier. My home is not from a magazine. It’s an average home that looks lived in, so the advice that I offer you will be realistic and obtainable. The work-shop will include lunch. The fee is $45. Please respond as soon as possible because the workshop limit is 10 people. I look forward to working with you.